


Life, the Universe, and Everything

by nhpw



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Biblical References, Bisexual Dean Winchester, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Genderqueer Castiel, M/M, Naked Cuddling, Nephilim, Post-Coital Cuddling, Season/Series 12, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, What I don't know I make up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-09
Updated: 2017-05-09
Packaged: 2018-10-29 23:01:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10863897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nhpw/pseuds/nhpw
Summary: Dean and Castiel talk late into the night. Cas reveals some things... but Dean's not mad. How can he be? He's home, he's safe, and he's in love.12.10 Coda.





	Life, the Universe, and Everything

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there!
> 
> I've sorta been... quiet. Sorry for that. I'm having pretty much the worst case of writer's block in the history of ever. Additionally, I've been spending some time focusing on an original work (HOLY SHIT, ORIGINAL FICTION FROM ME, WTF) that I'm sort of, kind of, maybe contemplating self-publishing later this year. For some reason I've had a hard time stepping back into the minds of existing characters after I've spent a few weeks trying to give life to some new ones.
> 
> This is just a tiny little timestamp to try to get myself back into the swing of things. Set post-"Lily Sunder." Pure, unadulterated fluff. Oh. And this isn't ABO and I didn't tag for Mpreg because there ISN'T ANY, but Dean and Cas do vaguely discuss how things might be different if Cas had chosen a female vessel. So... yeah. That's. That.

“Cas?”

“Hmmm?”

“Why’d your dad put the kibosh on Nephilim?”

It’s a rare quiet moment, and they’re a loose tangle of naked limbs on Dean’s bed. The Bunker is still, as it often is in the middle of the night; Dean remembers when they first moved in and he’d lain awake for nights on end, hypersensitive to sound, aware of the cavernous space, filled with nothing but books and ghosts. It had felt too big, too open,  _ too much _ , and he couldn’t relax. He’d pace the floor sometimes in the darkest hours before dawn, just waiting for the thing that was going to displace them from this peacefulness, ready to bolt at the first tiny pin-drop of a disturbance.

Except that, but for a few unwanted visitors, that moment has never come. Five years later, here they still are, fucked up family situation and all.

Nothing could serve as a harsh reminder that you’d called a place  _ home _ quite like being dropped in a stone prison cell in the middle of nowhere for six weeks.

He’d missed this place. He’d missed its quirks and its peaceful comfort… and he’d missed  _ this _ . He’d missed  _ Cas _ . First night back in his angel’s arms, and the last thing Dean wants to do is sleep. He’ll talk about anything, literally  _ anything _ , to keep that nose nuzzling his clavicle and that rough baritone rumbling out his partner’s mouth and into Dean’s chest.

Now, his question draws a huff of breath that warms Dean’s left pectoral, only to be followed by a shiver and a prickling of skin as Castiel shifts and snuggles more firmly up against his side. Dean turns his head to the left so he can look into those blue eyes he spend weeks dreaming about. “Why do you ask?”

“Curious, I guess. I mean, Lucifer’s spawn, yeah, that I get. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, and that’s sayin’ something coming from me, but. I dunno. Your standard seraphim, average human… what’s the harm in it?”

Castiel is silent for so long, fingers stroking idly through Dean’s hair, eyes studying Dean’s face in such earnesty that Dean is fairly certain he’s not going to get a straight answer. But about the time he gives up, it comes.

“It used to happen all the time. It’s how your species came to be so… prolific… in its infancy.” He sounds far away, like he’s musing on a memory - and, Dean thinks, maybe he is. “It’s naive, how many of your people still believe humanity came from a single cradle, one man, one woman. It’s not possible. If that’d been the case, inbreeding and lack of genetic mutation would’ve brought you to extinction ages ago. But… the Nephilim. They saved your people, in the beginning. Sons of God bred with daughters of men, and out of that came… all of you. We… introduced into your kind… longevity. Read the Bible; some of those men are reported to have lived for multiple hundreds of years, and that much is true. But we did that. The angels. We bred into your species… survival.”

“Thanks for that.”

Cas doesn’t reply; instead he licks his lips, smiles, and nuzzles at Dean’s nose. There’s no smile in his features, but it feels comforting all the same. “It was a good match, for the time that it lasted.”

“So what happened?”

“Humanity… Nephilim, really -- at that time, there was such a mixture of angel insemination in the blood of your species that it was difficult to know the difference -- became… corrupt. And my Father… he watched, horrified, as his creation grew more and more self-assured. Cocky. And then… self-destructive. He watched them posture and boast and take what they felt was theirs without a second thought. He watched them kill and rape each other out of pride, out of ego… and he knew he had to do something. And so he opened up the skies, and he brought the Flood.”

“The Flood-- Noah, the ark, the whole nine,  _ that _ flood?”

“It wasn’t… exactly like that. But he wiped the slate. Left just enough of humanity -- and he made sure they were all human, at that point, made sure the angel grace had been bred out of those who survived -- scattered around the planet so that they could start anew. And they did.  _ You  _ did. And then he turned to us, to the angels, and he decreed that we were never again to lay with a human in an attempt to procreate, and if we should, then we, and our children, and all we held dear, would be struck down. We were to be your protectors, your guides-- not your lovers.”

“But you and I-- I mean,” Dean laughs a little nervously, and Cas’ fingers twitch up to knit into Dean’s, hands joined across the plane of Dean’s chest. “Your dad’s not gonna strike you down with a bolt of lightening for-- for this? For us? Because, I mean, I’ve met the guy, hell, he’s showered down the hall right here in the Bunker, and I’d like to think he’s not just gonna show up here one day out of the blue and bust this up.”

“That won’t happen.”

“Why, because your daddy loves me and is counting on me to be the, uh. The firewall?”

“Because we don’t possess the necessary cumulative sexual organs to reproduce,” Castiel responds, deadpan, eyes incredulous at Dean’s obliviousness. He holds the expression for a solid ten-count, Dean staring back and trying to suppress his laughter, before the corners of Dean’s mouth curl up and Castiel catches on, rolling his eyes. “You’re incorrigible, Dean.”

“Shut up and kiss me.” Dean doesn’t wait for the order to be obeyed; instead, he rolls them so he’s on top, his body covering the angel’s, and they make out slowly, lazily, hands stroking along toned flanks and into tangled bedhead. 

And then, as if his mind was still subconsciously mulling the subject of their inability to reproduce, a thought jolts into Dean’s mind and he pulls back, his left hand still cupped to Castiel’s right cheek as he knits his brow and looks down at the beauty beneath him. “Wait.”

“Don’t wanna wait.” Castiel’s mumble is sinful and he’s leaning up to try to capture Dean’s lips again, and Dean sighs and melts into it if only for a moment, because his mind has gone off on a tangent about exactly when he turned Cas into a nymphomaniac.

“Is that… why you’re a dude? Like… Because, Anna. Anna was a chick,  _ and  _ an angel, and we-- I mean,  _ we did _ \--”

“Please don’t make me relive your sexual exploits with my sister while we’re mid-coitus.”

“Mid-- Cas, we have got to work on your sexy talk.”

“You shouldn’t have brought up--”

“OK, I’m sorry, all right, but I’m just.” He kisses Cas once, hard and possessive on the mouth, mostly just to convey that he’s not really pissed-- just curious. Too many years and too much of life have passed for Dean to hold this over Cas  _ now _ . Still… He pulls back and points a finger in his lover’s face. “Did you or did you not choose a male vessel over a female one so that if we got down to doing the horizontal polka, there’d be zero chance of you breaking some kind of celestial law against hybrid babies?”

Cas’ blush and 90-degree turn of his gaze is enough of a confirmation for Dean.

“You knew-- even then. You knew I was… that I swung both ways.”

“Dean.” Cas sighs, and Dean takes pity on the obvious guilt in his eyes and softens, leaning forward to nuzzle the angel’s brow and place a soft kiss there. “I know everything there is to know about you. Absolutely everything. Because I-- I put you back together. Every piece of you. I… recreated you, exactly as you were. I didn’t leave anything out. And in order to not leave anything out, I had to… I had to see it all, had to touch it all--”

“If you’d told it to me quite this way before we were sleeping together, I might have found it a little creepy.”

But Cas is clearly caught up in the memory, and he ignores Dean’s interruption, if he even hears it at all. “Some of your memories… they had so many sharp edges, they cut me to touch them. I bled into you. Some of your thoughts were torn and frayed and so fragile I could barely handle them, for fear they’d crumble apart in my hands. And some parts of you… some parts of you were buried so deeply that I wept to have to bury them just as deeply before I woke you up. And I… I felt, by the end of it, that I had gotten to know you. You were beautiful even then, fresh from Hell, because I knew you already, inside and out. I loved you already. And I… some part of me, I suppose, always hoped you’d love me back. I had… options… for a vessel strong enough to contain me. Jimmy Novak was the most viable option, and he appealed to me especially because physically-- he-- his features were--”

“He had blue eyes and brown hair and a puppy dog look I wouldn’t be able to look away from.” It’s a conclusion, and at another time, years ago, it might have been an accusation -- a confirmation that yet another person in Dean’s life had manipulated him. But for all the years, for all they’ve been through, Dean’s not angry now.

How could he be?

Castiel had looked at every ounce of Dean’s broken being, and at that darkest, weakest, most miserable point, he’d still found Dean worthy of love. He’d held on to that for  _ years _ , waiting, hurting, hoping, that Dean would return his affections.

And then one day, he had. He simply…  _ had _ .

“It doesn’t matter, you know.” They’re talking as much as they’re kissing, now; hands knit together on both sides of their bodies, and lips and tongues lazily exchange passive conversation for passion. “What we look like. This is my body now, and your body… we’re all just… made of molecules. Even when I was fully an angel, before I took a human vessel… I was just... ”

“We’re all made of starstuff, yeah, thanks Carl Sagan.”

“Who?”

“Nevermind.”

The conversation lulls and they lose themselves in one another. Cas enthusiastically rolls them so that he can pin Dean beneath him and rut into the hollow of his right hip.

“OK, but if we  _ could… _ ”

“I’m not having a conversation about this right now, Dean.” To make his point, Cas locks their lips together and drags it out past the point of breathlessness for his human partner, stealing the moment back from the biblical and scientific nuances that threaten to overtake it.

“You’re not fair.”

“I’m an angel. We don’t play fair. We play to win.”

“Hmmm.”

“And next time you bring up a member of my family during sex, I’m going to go and retrieve one of  _ yours  _ from down the hall.”

“OK, OK.”

“Dean?”

“Hmmm?”

“I love you.”

“Love you too, Cas.” He lets the angel take him away with touches and kisses that may or may not be intensified by an undercurrent of grace coursing through his blood, and Dean thinks as the pleasure consumes him that they may not have the power of a Nephilim between them, but  _ this  _ angel and  _ this  _ human, both fallen and frayed and broken only to come together in the most intimate of ways… the power of the love created is still there.

It’s always been there. It just took Dean a while to see it. But now that he has it here, around him, inside him, holding him close…

He’s never letting go.


End file.
